


Statement of Brian Williams Regarding his Abandonment at Sea

by stopeats



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Statement Fic, The Buried - Freeform, The Dark, but you might not notice them if you haven't listened through s3 tbh, it's mostly a very dumb idea from the discord that I decided to write, not horror, the vast, very light spoilers through s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 11:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21270419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopeats/pseuds/stopeats
Summary: The Vast and the Buried fight for dominion of the the ocean, and poor Brian Williams is stuck in the middle.





	Statement of Brian Williams Regarding his Abandonment at Sea

Statement of Brian Williams, regarding his abandonment at sea.

Statement begins.

**(STATEMENT)**

I have always been afraid of the water. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Brian, you’re a professional kayak guide; your _office_ is the water. To which I would respond, my office is above the water, thank you very much. It’s the being in it, surrounded by it, engulfed by it, that really scares me.

Granted, it did take me a full two years to perfect my roll, when most new paddlers can get a decent one down after a few months of practice. Whenever I tipped my kayak, allowing myself to be immersed, I panicked. I was so terrified by the all-encompassing darkness beneath my boat, I yanked off my skirt and fled to the surface, gasping and completely soaked.

It got to the point where it was embarrassing, and Ben Zirel, my boss, told me straight up either I got my roll together or I found employment somewhere else. Now, there’s nowhere quite like Seward in the summer, so I got myself a therapist who worked over the phone, unlicensed to save money, and faced my fears, day after day, week after week, until at last, I could tip sideways in my kayak, twist my hips and paddle, and re-emerge, skirt still on, drysuit only half soaked. Obviously, I quit therapy that same day.

I’m not sure where the idea of scuba diving came from, but my girlfriend had been on my back about ‘trying new things’ and ‘getting out there,’ as if being a wilderness guide in Alaska wasn’t adventurous enough, so I said I’d go, if anyone threw together a trip. For a few weeks, the thought of scuba diving remained the office gossip, something we all talked about, but also knew would never happen, until Sarah Nicohls of all people showed up early for a day trip and told me she’d comped two seats on a scuba trip tomorrow. Was I in? My girlfriend was out of town, so it wasn’t even like going on the trip was going to get me any credit with her, but I could hardly back down after agreeing before, could I?

I should have, of course, but hindsight can prove anyone wrong.

Sarah left for her full-day, I guided two half-days, one of which actually resulted in a fair tip, and we met early the next morning at a secluded dock across town. It wasn’t a normal launch for scuba trips, but I figured Sarah’s comped seats must’ve been for a training trip or something. Honestly, I was too busy staring at the white-capped waves in the distance, wondering how big they were, to really care.

It was an average sized group in kayak guiding terms: one captain for our boat, two instructors, and six guests, plus Sarah and myself. As I watched the other guests get ready, I regained some of my confidence. Sarah and I had showed up in our drysuits. This lot had no idea how to even put them on. We spent the whole trip out helping the two beleaguered guides coax the guests into the tight neoprene, and then we sat in the middle of the ocean, bobbing in gentle, five foot swells, as the instructors explained, in great details, how every single part of the scuba apparatus worked. Their lecture was boring enough to remove my last dregs of fear. When they’d checked over our equipment and given us the go ahead, I tossed an a-okay Sarah’s way and slipped backwards off the edge of the boat and into the water.

The boredom did not last. It is impossible to describe the horrible scene that awaited me. Water, everywhere. It stretched in every direction, but most especially down, pale green that faded to dark blue that faded to an inky blackness, perhaps inches from my flailing fins, perhaps miles. I couldn’t say because I was headed up.

When I broke the surface, I expected the panic to subside, but above the water was as bad as below. The trip out had taken some forty-five minutes and there was nothing but ocean on all sides. Every time I tried to lock my eyes on something solid, it dissipated, broke apart, moved, reformed, until I had no sense of my own place in an ever-changing universe. A swell rose, a great mountain of water that loomed up from the depths, casting its shadow long and dark across me, until it had picked me up, carried me to its peak, and deposited me in another trough.

I checked my oxygen meter. It still read as full, and yet, I was struggling to breathe. I cast about for Sarah, for the instructors, for the boat, somehow sure I wouldn't be able to find them, that I was entirely alone, but, there they were, only a few yards away. The captain leaned on a railing, whistling an off-pitch tune. One of the instructor waved at me and tugged up her mask. She must’ve asked how I was, and I presumably responded properly, because she nodded and dove.

I’m not sure how long I sat there, lifted and lowered by an eternity of undifferentiated swells, but at long last, I realized that I was on a scuba trip and had been underwater for a combined five or six seconds. Eventually, I was going to go back down or I was going to regret it for the next few weeks, not to mention, Sarah would never let me hear the end of it. I took a deep breath, realized I had oxygen literally strapped to my face, exhaled, and let my head disappear under the waves.

To my great displeasure, underwater was still all water. However, this time, I could at least make out the milky forms of my fellow divers. Sarah was lower than the rest, pointing to some wavering shadow, large enough to obscure any shark or whale. The other guests clustered close to the instructors and the surface, perhaps as scared as I was. 

That gave me the confidence I needed to inch a little farther down. If I told myself that the ground was a few inches away, that if I just kept swimming, I’d eventually see a smooth sandy bottom to the infinite ocean, I could just about maintain my composure.

The trip passed quickly. I heard a few dolphins, but never caught sight of them; admired some puffins from below; swam over to what I thought was a whale but turned out to be more ocean; and enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness, of neither falling nor sinking. When I next checked my oxygen meter, it was time to ascend. I followed the proper technique to avoid the bends and surfaced.

A swell hit me in the face. Beneath the waves, everything had felt somehow peaceful; I hadn’t noticed the winds whipping the water into a frenzy above us. I spun around and a wave crashed and shoved me down. When I returned to the surface, I spun around, casting about for the boat, for an instructor, for Sarah, for anything at all, but I was alone.

It was impossible. The boat was huge and I should have been able to see it, even yards away. I peeled off my mask and yelled, but I couldn’t hear myself over the roaring of the wind, and when a wave filled my mouth with salt water, I put the mask back on. Where had they gone?

I remembered a news story from Australia I’d read a few years before, about a honeymooning couple who’d been left out in the deep ocean by their scuba crew and never seen again. I shook my head. That had happened across the world, not here, in Seward. Not in my hometown. I would look again and they would be there. Except they were not. Underwater was empty except for water, and above was just the same. Everywhere, it was waves as far as I could see. No land, no people, no boat.

I was entirely alone. Unless, and this thought shook me to my core, there _was _something with me, something hiding in the darkness beneath the waves, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The ocean was huge, and anything could have been in it with me.

The panic struck me then in earnest. I flailed my arms, wasting valuable oxygen and energy in my attempt to draw the attention of an uncaring universe. My fins pumped against the boundless water beneath me, struggling to keep me afloat until I was gasping for breath and my throat was hoarse.

In a moment of weakness, I looked down at the endless, empty expanse, and I imagined the weight of it all, millions and millions of tons, pressing towards me. If I sank, it would fill my lungs and weigh me down until the water was all that was left of me. Something moved beneath me. A trick of the light? Or a shark, come to finish me off? 

A wave crested over my head, and for a second, my nightmare was real. My arms, once weightless, were now too heavy to lift, and then I kicked my feet and I was free. My oxygen meter was close to 0. I was going to die in the middle of the ocean. The only question was how I did it: crushed, drowned, eaten, or just lost in the bigness of it all?

It was hard to decide which option was worse.

Looking down made my stomach drop, so I laid backwards, floating as best I could on the now ten- or fifteen-foot swells, my arms and legs splayed. Unable to do anything but witness my own demise, I focused on my breathing. Sarah was always going on about meditating, finding the inner peace or what have you. I could do with some inner peace, in that moment.

Something whined, not like a dolphin or whale, but… like a boat!

I swung upright and waved my arms high as I could muster. I must’ve yelled, although what, I cannot say. Somehow, though, I was heard, or seen, and in the distance, I saw a motorboat turn and head my way, cutting through the waves like a knife. It wasn’t the scuba boat but in the moment, I did not care. They slowed as they approached me and a figure above, obscured by wind and waves, threw down a ladder. I don’t know where the strength came from, but I clambered up that ladder faster than I’ve done anything in my life and huddled into the very center of the admittedly small boat, clutching a seat for safety. My body was wracked with shivers, but I was not offered a blanket or food by any of the three figures surrounding me.

They loomed more than the stood, each taller than the last. There was a woman with black hair plastered across her cheeks and neck from the rain; a lanky man, perhaps college aged, with a pointed jaw; and an old man so skinny, I could count the bones in his wrist. For a long while, none of them spoke, until the silence grew almost as heavy as all the water beneath us and I cleared my throat. That jolted them into action.

“You are scared of the water?” It was the older man, but the voice was surprisingly cheerful, and British. We didn’t get a lot of those in Alaska. Most European tourists were German.

I nodded that, yes, I was quite scared of the water, and I was about to explain that I’d been abandoned, and to thank them for rescuing me, when the younger man spoke. “What scared you?”

I blinked. “What scared me? The water.”

“What about it?” At my continued disbelief, he gestured at the old man. “We have a bet, him and I.” He was British too, although the two of them didn’t look to be related. “As you waited for death, adrift and alone, what scared you?”

For some reason, I glanced at the woman, as if she might help. “Is she here on a bet as well?” 

All three of them shook their heads. The older man said, “She is here as judge,” at the same time the woman said, “Neither of them could drive a boat.”

For the life of me, I had no good way to respond to that. I just looked from one to the next and back again, trying to find a hint of sympathy in the twitch of a mouth or blink of an eye and finding nothing but disdain.

“So,” said the old man. “You were telling us about the water. What scared you? Was it, perhaps, the great size of it? The feeling of being small and helpless, your life a meaningless blip in an uncaring universe?”

I must’ve gaped. “What?”

“Or perhaps,” interrupted the younger man, clawing a clump of hair off his forehead with his fingers. He had, now that I was looking at him properly, the palest skin of anyone I’d ever met, like he hadn’t seen a day of sun in his life. “It was the great weight of it. The thought of water filling your lungs. Of being surrounded on all sides, pressed in, crushed, until you cannot breathe and you succumb.”

The older man smiled. “So tell us, which was it?”

“Neither.” Perhaps snapping at my three saviors was not the best of ideas, but I did not like the way any of them were staring at me, and to my surprise, it worked. The two men sighed, shared a look, and shrugged.

“That’s it?” wondered the woman. “You drag me to Alaska for that?”

“The results are inconclusive.”

She shook her head, incredulous.

What should’ve happened then was a mayday for the Coast Guard. I couldn’t stop shivering, which suggested hypothermia, and none of them looked to have an ounce of wilderness first aid between them. Not to mention, the storm was growing stronger and our boat was not suited for swells of that size. The water taxi, about twice as big, wouldn’t enter ten-foot seas, and these waves were twenty feet at least. They emerged from the darkness, their sides steep and unforgiving, crashing over the roof of the boat with a sound like hammer on anvil, and each time, I huddled closer to my seat. Part of me was smart enough to grab a PFD from under my bench, but beyond that, I could only watch as the woman piloted us through the waves and the storm. Neither man looked concerned. In fact, the older one kept looking down at the pitch black water and smiling to himself, as if sharing a joke.

We docked, but I was not at all surprised that the woman put a hand to my chest and did not let me leave. Whatever the town was, it wasn’t Seward, and I remained on board as the two men left. At least, closer to the coast, the waves were not quite so high.

“So,” she began as we pulled away from the dock. I became acutely aware of the fact that I was now alone with her. “What was it then that scared you? If it wasn’t the Vast or the Buried, whose fear was it?” Her tone was so conversational, I almost mistook her question for normal.

“I was scared of what might be in the water with me, what I might not be able to see.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“The Dark. You’re scared of the Dark.”

“Not of the dark precisely. I-”

“Of what might be hiding in the dark, yes, I understand.” She took her hands off the wheel, a discomforting action for a captain. “The Vast and the Buried have been battling for centuries over the watery depths and here you are, scared of the Dark.” She smiled then, but it was definitely not from mirth. “I suppose,” she said, stepping towards me. “That means _I _win the bet.”

I backed away from her, towards the stern of the boat, and she followed after, pace slow and inexorable.

“This trip was not entirely wasted, then.” She picked me up by the collar of my drysuit and flicked me off the back of the boat as if I mattered no more to her than a fleck of dust on her shirt. I flew, fell, sank, and bobbed back up but she had already turned away.

I don’t need to rehash the rest of the story. I’m sure you can find it online, if you look: _Seward Resident Washes up Half Dead on Beach_. It was the PFD that saved me. All those years as a kayak guide and I never go out without one and that instinct is the only reason I survived those horrible days and nights in the water, tired, hungry, scared out of my mind, clutching at the bright orange of my PFD and praying for it to _end_, in death or rescue, I didn’t care.

It was a few months before I risked going out on the kayak again. Ben was nice about it. He gave me desk duty, even though we hardly needed two schedulers at that time in the season. Eventually, though, we both knew I’d need to guide again or find a new job, and guiding sounded better to me.

Being on the water wasn’t quite enough to phase me, but when I tried to roll, when I willingly succumbed to the darkness beneath the waves, well, Sarah had to pull me out, scared I was going to drown. On my own, I made no attempt to flip back up or pull loose my skirt and swim to the surface. I simply accepted my fate, whatever it might be.

So, I’m no longer a kayak guide. I’m thinking of trying for ski instructing. Snow is very bright. Even buried, maybe I’d still be able to see.

Statement ends.


End file.
